


Being a Friend

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s07e06 Lifeboat, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-19
Updated: 2011-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janet Fraiser, doctor and friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being a Friend

“Daniel?” She speaks softly but feels she has to say s _omething_. This is happening too often to ignore.

“Daniel?” She asks again, a little more forcefully.

He turns to look at her and it’s as though everything is happening with a two-second delay. He’s zoning out, then returning, unaware that he’s been “missing.” It’s been happening ever since the Stromos. Ever since they almost lost him beneath the weight of a dozen lost souls. As his physician, she cannot countenance the thought of losing him again, so soon after his descension, and certainly not like this. She fought for him then and she’ll fight for him now.

She smiles at him. She wants him to talk, if that’s what he wants. He’s said very little so far.

 Daniel went back to work two days after they retrieved the multiple personalities. It was too soon.

The others are worried. Sam’s been pestering Janet with hourly condition checks; _“There’s something not right, Janet.”_

 Teal’c has been shadowing the man and reporting back; “ _He appears lost in his own thoughts, Dr. Fraiser.”_ She is more afraid he is lost in someone else’s.

 _“Make him right, doc. I want him right and I want him home,”_ was Colonel O’Neill’s only comment on the subject.

So, under pressure from those who love him most, and pretty much against his will, Daniel’s back in bed in her infirmary. Resting.

He blinks at her, blue eyes tired and slightly unfocused.

“Do you have a headache?” she asks. He has. He gets this tiny bump on his forehead just over his right eye. Gives him away every time.

“Um. A little.” He appears distracted, largely disinterested. Daniel’s world appears confined to what is going on inside his head.

“I can give you some stronger painkillers.” It’s a suggestion she knows he’ll refuse.

“No. Thank you. They make everything fuzzy. Fuzz-ier, I should say.” She can see him listening to himself speak, listening to the words as they leave his mouth.

He’s … lost.

She takes his hand. It feels cold. “Daniel … it’s _you,_ honey.” The endearment slips out of its own volition. There’s a thin veneer between her professional and private personas. And Daniel is a friend. Maybe he needs the friend rather than the doctor right now.

He blinks at her again, eyelashes sweeping slowly down on to his pale cheek.

“They’re gone, but you’re here. And you’re not going anywhere and neither are we. Well, you could be going to Colonel O’Neill’s place once he can persuade me to spring you from here.” She squeezes his hand, tries to rub some warmth into it.

He looks at her for a moment; there’s that dissonance again, so disturbingly un-Daniel-like. And then he smiles, a small grin gently raising one corner of his mouth.

“That would be good,” he says, and then he’s off again, lost to her, so she touches his face, pulls his head gently round until they’re eye to eye.

“Stay with me, Daniel. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He seems to think hard about what he’s thinking. “That I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m not sure how much of me is left. I think I still hear them and then I realize it’s me talking.”

It’s the most he’s spoken since it happened.

He’s frightened.

Janet cups his cheek and holds his hand tighter. “We know who you are, Daniel Jackson. Let us show you.”

He nods and he thinks she sees relief in his eyes.

She’ll fight for this man. Her patient and her friend.

Every step of the way.


End file.
